Tag Archives: yurt

Simple Yurt Luxuries

18 Wednesday Mar 2015

Posted by in Nature/Environment

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Of all the sounds in the world, running water is one of my favorites.  In spring (or near spring, as we have seemed to drop back into winter for a few days here in Central Vermont), the sound and sight of flowing water means thaw.  It means birds returning and snow melting and damp pasture grasses revealing the gold bodies of their autumn blades.

Inside the yurt, though, the sight of flowing water brings me to my feet and has me whooping with excitement.

I came home last night to see Edge’s body half submerged in the hole under our sink, where a line connects a hand pump to our shallow-dug spring.  Last winter, the line froze, and in an attempt to thaw it with a torch, the line ended up with a hole in it.  Come summer, we always found ourselves too busy, with the water line at the bottom of our to-do list (and hauling water in the summer isn’t so hard).  Come winter, we figured it’d freeze again anyway.  When the March snows softened, hauling water suddenly became a drudge with east post-hole step uphill.

So it both excites me and relaxes me to say, our hand-pump is working.  It may not be the turn of a faucet, but that water sure does look like its running as it pours into the sink.

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My first yurt home

25 Wednesday Feb 2015

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“I want to live in a yurt,” a co-worker said when she learned today that I do live in a yurt.

“I want to live in a house,” I said in jest, “and to have windows and better insulation.”  I laughed, then conceded that, “it is really nice to live in a round space.”

It’s our fifth winter in a 20-foot yurt, and after so many years, the fact that our home is more of a glorified tent doesn’t phase me much.  It’s what we’ve built our life in, where our dreams have germinated, where our family grows.

We are both feeling ready to create more space, at least by next winter, and to move into a building with thick walls and windows that beg for house plants to sit on the sill.  Sometimes, though, it’s worth looking back and seeing what brought me here.

My first yurt home was situated under hemlocks on an Adirondack lake.  To reach the little yurt village where I spent a semester with 13 other students, we hiked a mile in through the woods, then canoed three-quarters of a mile across the lake.

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Canoe commute

It was the most relaxing commute I’ve ever had (though we didn’t commute very often)–more relaxing even than the 300 foot walk from my front door to the garden here at the farm–and surely the most inspiring commute, too.  There is something about the smooth strokes of a canoe paddle that bring the body into presence.

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My first yurt home

I was 19 and learning that wildness could be part of my life everyday.  I was learning that living close to nature didn’t have to be relegated to yearly camping trips.  I was learning that the pulse I felt when I sat beneath a red pine could be the rhythm I set my days to.

After that semester ended, it would be five years before I’d live in a yurt again.

photo by Katie Spring

My second yurt home

Where I live now is my third yurt home–the second still stands at Applecheek Farm, where we apprenticed before finding our own land.  Edge built this one from saplings that dotted an old sugaring road in the Applecheek woods.  He sawed and hauled and split and assembled each piece with his own hands, his own muscle, and now it encircles us and holds us through these cold winter days.

Though we talk more of a house these days, it’s the yurt that has brought us to where we are.  It’s a yurt that became my home during my first earnest search for wildness, and a yurt that is my home still, as we cultivate our own wild hearts and grow our roots deep into this land.

My yurt home now

My yurt home now

The Seeds We Sow

23 Monday Feb 2015

Posted by in Farming, Seasons

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I wish that living in a yurt on a Vermont hillside farm could make me immune to the annoyances of broken computers, and the odd frustration that comes when said computer is at the shop getting fixed and I am here with an old iPad that works well enough for emails, but not much more.  We finally got a loaner computer, and so I’m back to the blog after a few weeks of sporadic posts.

Truthfully, though, I’ve felt quiet.  Perhaps it’s not just the computer issues that have kept my posts minimal and short.  It goes like that sometimes, a wave of production followed by a quiet recession back into the deep, like the tide that swells and retreats.

The farm is covered with snow, the garden under perhaps 4 feet of it, and tonight the cold seeps in from under the clear night sky.  It’s a night to pack the fire box and keep the dials on the wood stove turned open a bit more than usual.

We’ve been in the throws of spring planning: greenhouse repairs, seeding charts, cash-flow charts, marketing, perennial design, and lists of infrastructure improvements.  It feels both exciting and daunting, and we oscillate between dreamy imaginings of all the good changes to come and business crunching, detached from emotion.

The work of a farmer begins long before the greenhouse is fired up and soil is spread out in trays.  The seeds we are sowing now are sketches on paper, numbers and images and words.  Though it seems like the summer is still far away, this work is important.  Before we can manifest something into being, we must first know what it is we want to create.

In all the planning and prep work, in all the manifestations we are setting out into the world, I took out this poem again, just to remind myself that sometimes, it is okay to be demanding as we manifest our dreams:

Throw away all your begging bowls at

God’s door,

for I have heard the Beloved prefers

sweet, threatening shouts, something

on the order of, “Hey, Beloved, my soul

is a raging volcano of love for you!

You better start kissing me–or else!”

~Hafiz

When You Need to Change Your Landscape

05 Thursday Feb 2015

Posted by in Nature/Environment

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You don’t have to go to the desert in winter to gain space.

When you need to change your internal landscape, it is helpful to change your external one, but still, it doesn’t mean you need to leave home.

Last night, one week after landing back on the frozen Vermont ground, we finally finished unpacking and cleaned the yurt.  Backpacks and duffle bags emptied and stowed away, kitchen table cleared off, floors swept, and all the sudden the yurt is bigger.

Sometimes all it takes to gain the space we need is a good home cleaning.

 

This Moment

05 Friday Dec 2014

Posted by in Morning Inspiration

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{this moment} ~ A Friday ritual. A single photo – no words – capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember. {a tradition from SouleMama}

coming home

Another Winter in the Yurt

10 Monday Nov 2014

Posted by in Family, Seasons

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Winter, 2013

Winter, 2013

Snow flurries breezed over our hillside and into the valley this past week, and though the land isn’t white by any means, we’re only 6 weeks from solstice, and the shorter days and colder nights bring us closer to the bare quietness of winter.  This will be our fourth winter in the yurt, and inside we are making some changes.

It’s Waylon’s second winter in the yurt, but first as a toddler.  He’s not one to sit still unless he’s snuggling in for a book (and even then, he’s always ready to go grab more books and bring them back to us to read).  He walks in circles around the yurt, climbs on anything he can, and is reaching higher everyday to pull down whatever it is that’s just out of reach.

So, to make the yurt more toddler-friendly, and winter ready, we’ve made a few changes…

  • We put a door on the yurt!When our dogs broke the screen door this summer, we replaced it with a blanket (very traditional!).  The solid door needed some repairs and re-painting, and it took until October to finally get around to it (though we could have used it during some torrential rain storms when water pounded right through the blanket and onto the floor).  The door used to be a lovely antique shade of green, but we only had one color of paint on hand, and so “grandma’s sweater” blue now graces our door, and I have to say, I love its brightness.

Our Door: Grandma's Sweater Blue

  • A homemade railing for the lofted bed~When the heat of summer rolled in and the lofted bed became too stuffy and hot, we moved our sleeping quarters down to the futon.  No more, though!  Edge built a safety railing for the loft and our toddler who loves to test the limits.  With the futon as a couch again, we’ve re-claimed some space on our “main floor.”

toddler bed railing

  • A play nook for Waylon~With a little cleaning out and rearranging, the space under the lofted bed is now a play nook for Waylon.  With a bookcase, his toys, an oversized pillow, and a string of Christmas lights, I often look over while I’m making dinner or cleaning up to see him in the nook pulling books down and banging on a drum.  (Of course, the dogs appreciate the pillow, too).

Waylon's play nookAnd then there are the little things, like doing dishes every day, sweeping each night, and keeping the dining table relatively clutter-free (relatively).  As we nestle in, creating a nest that we can all find space in is truly important to add peace to our days.  Though we talk more and more of what kind of house we’ll build (and I admit, these conversations almost always start by me), living in the circle of a yurt brings a coziness I’ve yet to find anywhere else.

As we tucked into bed last night with the warmth of a fire in the wood stove and a bright moon just peaking over the ridge, I said, “I love our life.  I love our boy, and our yurt, and being so cozy.”  And as Edge smiled and clicked off the light, we drifted into an early winter night, ready for our fourth winter in the yurt.

This Moment

17 Friday Oct 2014

Posted by in Family

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{this moment} ~ A Friday ritual. A single photo – no words – capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.  {a ritual from Soule Mama}

Live Your Romantic Life

30 Wednesday Jul 2014

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“It’s beautiful up here.  This is my dream: to buy a little piece of land in Worcester, put up a yurt, and raise my family,” she said.  I smiled, allowing the romance of it all to stay in her mind.  And why not?  It is romantic, isn’t it–to live up here on this hillside, sheep and chickens grazing in the pasture, an acre of food growing in the garden, our family held each night in the circle of the yurt.  It’s all so lovely.  I say this to remind myself that we are here because it was our dream, too, though truthfully, the thought that shot through my head at her declaration was the ease of a house with running water, well-insulated walls, and hard-wired electricity.  I pictured her turning on the faucet at night to make a bath for her son, then pictured myself hauling two 5-gallon buckets up the hill to the yurt, pouring water in a pot and waiting for it to heat up on the stove before pouring it again into the sink.  This is why Waylon doesn’t get daily baths–I know the weight of water.

Just as I let her, I let myself dream up a romantic picture of life in town: living in a house with big windows and light streaming through in the morning, having a clean kitchen with matching dish clothes and bowls that don’t chip from being piled on the floor of the yurt when we’ve run out of water and can’t seem to find the time to run down and refill the buckets in the greenhouse, tight walls that hold warmth, doors that keep the wind outside instead of offering cracks for it to whistle in, a small garden just for the family, the ease of keeping the car parked and walking everywhere.

But then I think, what kind of job would I have to do to have that life?  Where would the dogs run?  What about the noise of traffic?  I think about the weight of water, how I stop to rest a few times as I carry the jugs uphill, how those moments of rest are filled with breath and a view of the mountains.  I think of Waylon and the amount of dirt he eats, and the strength of his immune system thanks to it.  I think of the word easy and wonder what it really means, because I tried the life of 9:00-5:00 inside at a desk with a salary and benefits, and you know what?  It didn’t make my life easier.

What’s easy is to romanticize what we don’t have.

It’s worth remembering that we are here because we chose it.  We are here because we strive to create a life of balance, substance, and joy.  It’s worth remembering that the most challenging times are also the pivotal ones that determine our path.  It’s also worth remembering that there is actually nothing stopping me from having matching dish clothes.

I let my town-living daydream drift off in the wind and come back to this life in our yurt, with unfinished projects and sheep that escape their fence and 50 families to grow food for.  I come back to it because it brings me alive.  After all, romance is not always easy or without conflict, but it is nourishing.  And though she drove back to her home in town, to our visitor, and to you all, I say this:

Choose your path, and live your romantic life.

Waylon and Mama scything

From Birth to Now: 9 months in a Yurt

27 Sunday Apr 2014

Posted by in Family

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There are times I can read people’s minds.  Like when I first tell someone that we live in a 20 foot yurt with no running water, and the look on their face says what their voice won’t:

You have a baby, what are you thinking? 

But when we are questioned about our home, I think of our friends outside of Fairbanks, Alaska, who raised two kids in a 24 foot yurt for six years.  I think of the man we bought our first yurt from who raised his two girls, in the same size yurt we have, for 12 years.  I think of all the ways it is and has been completely do-able.

And it has been do-able.  So today we celebrate.

Waylon turns 9 months old today.  9 months.  How did that happen?  From a floppy newborn to a crawling wanna-be toddler with four teeth, he has challenged me and loved me and taught me how to discover the world all over again.  He has made me think “this is so great, let’s have 5 babies!” and “how could I ever have another baby?  He is the best one–how could any baby be better?”

So for all of you who wonder what are we thinking, here are a few tips on yurt-living with a baby (and two dogs):

1. Time your baby’s arrival in the mid-late summer.  This is important for a few reasons: aside from having abundant fresh food, the outdoors becomes a large second room.  Sometimes Papa or Mama need some space, so It’s helpful to have a second room when adjusting to life with a new baby.  This timing also means that by the time baby is crawling and/or walking, the winter has (hopefully) passed and they, too can explore in the large second room.

2.  Organize.  We have a lofted bed, which until I entered my “nesting” phase was a catch-all of random stuff.  At the beginning of my third trimester, I spent a night hunched under the bed, pulling everything out, getting rid of junk and re-organizing the space.  All of the sudden, we had two more usable shelves, a space for baby clothes, and knew where all our camping supplies were.

3.  Get the dogs used to sleeping on the floor.  The dogs, who had taken our lofted bed as permission for sleeping on the futon, had a hard time with this.  The futon is so much cushier!  But when my belly got too big and I was up too often to pee in the middle of the night, we opened the futon up into a bed and took it over again.  It took a week or two, but eventually Nobee and Pebble got used to their dog bed in the newly organized space under the loft.

4.  Begin Elimination Communication early.  Just as babies can tell us when they’re hungry or tired, they also have cues to tell us when they need to pee and poop.  When Waylon was three months, we began paying attention to his rhythms and putting him on a potty when he made a certain face and began to squirm.  We’ve missed a few times, but for the last six months Waylon has pooped in the potty, making cloth diapering MUCH easier (remember: no running water).

5.  When baby becomes mobile, be okay with non-traditional toys.  Dog bowls, spoons, salad dressing bottles–anything Waylon can reach, he plays with…okay, not anything, I do redirect him when he gets too close to the pantry or the stove.  But it’s really hard to “baby proof” a yurt since there’s already a limited amount of space to put things, and it’s amazing how happy he is banging the dog bowls around.

Finally, be flexible.  Though this goes for all parents, not just those living in a yurt.  There are times my patience is tested, when I’m tired and hungry myself, times when it’s hard to remember to breathe.  Those are the times we utilize our second room.  Fresh air calms Mama, Papa and Baby, and gives us the space to be flexible again.  In that way, perhaps it’s easier parenting in a yurt–the expanse of outside is only a door away.